sales reps

Like this article? PLEASE +1 it!

sales reps Tagged Articles

Goals for sales reps in 2010

The downturn in the world economy has forced a lot of companies to rethink their sales plans in the last year or two. While some sectors of business might not be doing as badly as others, the general feeling is one of "things can't go on like this forever." This half-hopeful/ half incredulous outlook is pretty much the norm right now. For the new entrepreneur though, this is an opportunity to compete on a more level playing field. The big players in just about every sector have scaled back in so many areas that the market has opened up for the more streamlined and customer service oriented small businesses. For sales people this is your chance to play ball.

Selling Value Vs. Being a Commodity
Buyers and sales reps are in a constant battle. The buyer is trying to strip away the perception of value to drive down prices while the sales rep is left to defend why the buyer should be willing to pay more. The sad truth is that sales people are often lacking in the skills required to sell value. These tips will help you defend your profit margins from erosion.

Gone Are the Days… Revitalizing Sales Reps for the New Century

As an "A" player in the New Century you must build business-to-business relationships through channels that other team members can service. The special buyer/salesman relationship isn't dead, golf is still allowed, entertainment is still acceptable, but the degree to which these tools are used has changed. Certainly, the focus and the gray matter behind the sales planning process must contribute more to the long-term goals of the organization. The sales representative in the New Century ensures that their products, their services and their company becomes the channel of choice. The primary objective is the same. "First Call and Last Look," but the methodology has evolved to a higher level. Transactions are no longer managed by the field sales representative.

Too Many Sales Reps Are Wimps
In general, sales reps represent themselves as a pretty tough, resilient, independent bunch. I’m not so sure about that.

Closing Challenges & The Buyer Engagement Process
Buyers are savvy. A buyer’s purchase process and tactics present a number of closing challenges for sales reps. Sales reps that understand buyer tactics and negotiation methods are in a better position to implement the buyer engagement process.

Communicating Challenging News
Communication is tough at the best of times and even tougher when it is challenging news on a departmental or company level. Most sales leaders do not communicate challenging news well. Learning to improve their communication tactics will help them face less resistance and facilitate a smooth transition when changes are to be made.

Becoming a Priority
Sales reps that do not put ample time into researching and planning can only hope for the best. Reps that are dedicated to creating specific and specialized solutions that are based on the buyer’s current priorities have a legitimate chance of doing business. These sales reps can effectively relate a valid business reason to the buyer’s current situation.

Best Action Commitment
Sales reps must strive for the best action commitment from their potential buyers when developing a sale. Agreeing to commitment requests from a sales rep proves a buyer’s engagement in the sales process. Agreeing to the rep’s best action commitment demonstrates engagement at an even higher level, potentially reducing the number of steps required to close in the multi-step sales process.

Individual Purpose Statements
Sales reps have their own personal goals and motivators for success, but they often do not align with corporate goals. When an individual purpose statement is created that aligns these goals, reps demonstrate improved morale, better results, and fewer performance issues.

Avoidale Mistakes Made By Sales Leaders

Sales reps must be managed effectively. Sales leaders have to understand their reps’ capabilities in order to place them in an ideal sales environment where they can have a positive impact on the company and sales results. Sales leaders who can successfully identify their reps capabilities will be able to utilize their talents in the proper context. This will create a more efficient sales team while working within the context of their sales skills.

Classifying Buyer Pain

Sales reps that can identify a buyer’s goals and objectives will be in an ideal position to uncover obstacles that are creating pain. Sales reps must understand that a buyer’s pain is their opportunity. The bigger and more urgent the pain, the better reps can properly identify the buyer’s pain classification, and therefore be able to effectively lead with an aligned solution that meets their needs.

The Buyer Engagement Experience
The buyer is the key to the sale. Sales reps that follow a sales process which effectively focuses on the buyer’s perspectives, needs, and situation will create an effective buyer engagement experience. Reps that can offer a customized service with a personal touch will have a significant edge over competitors that focus on a “make the sale” rep-centric approach to the sales process.

Guerrilla Headlines
Headlines are used in ads, commercials, telemarketing calls, direct mail letters, websites, sales presentations and more. Can you write great ones?

What Independent Sales Reps Should Expect From Their Principals
For any independent sales rep who is dealing with principals, there are things that are not only reasonable to expect from your principal, but should always be provided. For example, principals should always provide training for the lines that you carry, as well as the means to stay in contact with them, and the materials that you will need to market their lines.

Hiring Quality Sales Reps
Hiring quality sales reps takes time. It cannot be rushed and must be done properly. Sales leaders must have an effective hiring process in place to evaluate the pool of candidates they have developed. Hiring is much more then filling a position. It is an opportunity to improve the sales team by adding successful individuals.

Increase Revenue through Sales Call Coaching

Revenue per sales rep will increase when you improve their selling skills through coaching. Coaching is a process to close the gap between the current and desired performance. It is a system of sales development that allows people to learn through discovery, guided discussion and performance feedback. And it is a partnership with your sales reps to help them improve their knowledge, attitudes and skills.

How To Make 2011 Your Best Year Yet
So what are you going to do to make 2011 better than 2010? What plans or goals did you have in 2010 that you thought would make it better than 2009? Did you stick with them? Did they work? What are you going to do differently in 2011?

Best Sales Strategy for Your Company
Let's say that you failed to close a company who decided against buying what you were trying to sell them. Does it make any sense to return to them and offer to sell them what they are willing to buy?

Network Marketing Prospecting: Cockamamie Fridays
In the past network marketers used a subtle, back door approach to pitch you on their product or service. Today it is a wham-bam in your face approach: come and get it. Now.

What are the benefits of a CRM system in your business? Part 2

Sales reps often represent the "face" of your company. In order for them to do their part in driving outstanding sales results, they should be empowered to put their best foot forward when representing their company. To do this, a Sales Automation or CRM needs to be in tune with their needs. Putting their best foot forward is going to mean many things. Further to this I would like to add that a CRM should also be in tune with your customers needs helping them have the best experience they can have with you.

The Magic Bullet of Marketing

Marketing on a local level must be a process. Almost all of the restaurant owners, operators and managers I work with in the trenches discuss marketing as an "event" or a "series of events", designed to produce instant sales and instant gratification. They search for the magic bullet. The promise of this magic bullet comes as a trojan horse from the advertising sales reps that hammer them with terms like "saturation", "shelf life" and other such sales tactics. Sometimes the magic bullet suggestion comes from an advertising agency hired to boost sales quickly. These agencies like to throw around concepts such as "branding" and "image building." These magic bullets begin to get expensive. And any results that come in are very short-lived. Eventually the truth sets in...you can't purchase a magic bullet for marketing your restaurant,no

Setting the Bar Higher As a Top Sales Manager

I just love the "corporate sales buzzwords" don't you? Some of my personal favorites: "We need to start thinking outside the box" "Let's take a deeper dive on that..." "We need to give it 110 percent!" "Let's create a win-win for the customer" "It's all about change management" "Let's take that offline" "At the end of the day..." "Let's produce some strong organic growth" And my personal favorite: "We need to set the bar high" I once heard an expression that stuck with me on the use of profanity in speech. I may not have it exactly right, but it goes like something like this: "The use of profanity is the work of a feeble mind trying desperately to express itself" I do have to admit, I do swear a bit...but I never (any more) use cliched corporate sales "buzz words" in front of my sales team.

Why Sales Managers Need to Make Regular Deposits in "The Trust Account"

In your bank account, you have an ATM card that only you have the PIN number to access the account funds. Every week, you make regular deposits and withdrawals into your account. Base salary deposits go in regularly through automatic deposit, while bonuses and commission checks go in periodically with expense checks and other deposits. You make cash withdrawals, debit card purchases, write checks, and make other payments. Unless you enjoy bouncing checks and incurring overdraft fees, you're careful to monitor your balances so you don't bounce checks and rack up those nasty overdraft fees. Even though you may have overdraft protection, you certainly don't want to pay 16.75% interest, so you're careful to make sure your deposits outweigh your withdrawals.

How a Top Sales Manager Gets Their Salespeople to Sell More Stuff!

When do you do your best work? When you feel bad or when you feel good? The obvious answer is when you feel good. No one feels like doing much of anything when they feel bad. When people don't feel so good, they end up doing very little....not a good situation for you. So it begs the question: does the salesperson brimming with confidence sell more than the salesperson who lacks confidence? The answer may seem obvious, but why do so few average sales managers spend the majority of their time building their people's confidence up instead of ripping it down? It could be that many sales managers are former sales salespeople themselves and "seagull sales management" (swoop in, dump on the rep, then fly away), is all they know. In this case, unfortunately, ignorance begets more ignorance...

Why a Top Sales Manager Must Always "Tune Into the Right Frequency"

It's definitely clichéd, but I think this is one of the most critical elements to successful sales management and that is to make sure you are tuned into the right radio frequency with your salespeople. There's only one radio station that your sales executives like to listen to and that radio station is: WIFM. (You might say WIIFM, but let's not get too technical here...). This is the "What's-In-It-For-Me" radio frequency. This is the only station they pay any attention to and if you're not broadcasting on it all the time, 24-7, then your sales reps are gonna switch you over to some other station on XM or Sirius radio...or worse yet, turn off the radio completely!

Sales Manager Training Tips: 3 Steps to Hiring Top Performing Salespeople

In a discussion with the head of sales of a mid-sized pharmaceutical company, he wanted to know why some front-line sales managers are much better than others at hiring top performers. Before answering, I asked if he had a systematic hiring process. The reason I asked that is when there is no process in place the ability to select top-performing reps is dependent on the skills of the sales manager. Anytime you create a systematic process you tend be better at predicting success.

Sales Tips for Commercial Salespeople and Sales Managers - How to Win Sales by Being Positively Predictable
This article is about creating a positive predictable experience for your prospects and customers. The salespeople who create a positively predictable experience for decision-makers earn both sales and referrals by taking the risk out of the buy-sell equation. Here's how.

Latest Fiction for the Sales Force - No More Hunters/Farmers

In 2007 we had to deal with writers proclaiming that sales and the sales force were dead. The reality of all of that talk was that the people writing about it weren't close enough to sales to know what they were talking about. Companies with transactional sales don't need salespeople selling their transactional items, but they do need salespeople persuading companies to choose them in the first place. Then the transactions can be placed via Internet or an inside sales group. That's about the only scenario where the "dead" proclamation even comes close to being accurate.

Why A Top Sales Manager Needs To Be On All His Reps’ “Pre-sets”

You have to be more popular than Howard Stern. You also have to be cooler than Opie and Anthony too. Why? Because one of the most critical elements to successful sales management is to always make sure you are tuned into the radio frequency of your salespeople. Here's why. There's only one radio station that your sales executives like to listen to and that radio station is: WIFM. (You might say WIIFM, but let's not get too technical here...). This is the "What's-In-It-For-Me" radio frequency. This is the only station they pay any attention to and if you're not broadcasting on it all the time, 24-7, then your sales reps are gonna switch you over to some other station on XM or Sirius radio...or worse yet, turn off the radio completely!

What Seagulls Can Teach You About Top Sales Leadership
Ever work for a " Seagull Sales Manager"? You probably have. A "Seagull Sales Manager" is a sales manager who seldom interacts with his people but occasionally swoops down, dumps on everybody, and then quickly flies away. If you haven't guessed already, this is not exactly the kind of leadership we advocate at Sales Management Mastery...

Sales Management Training Tips: Sales Coaching vs. Admin?

After my last blog 5 Ways to Gauge Your Sales Managers’ Coaching, I heard from several clients. One VP of Sales loved the article and asked for copies for his Directors of Sales. Two heads of sales from different companies liked the post but did not want to send it out to their frontline sales managers because of my comment (see below) that coaching was more important than administration. Neither wants their sales managers to feel that it is OK to spend time in the field and avoid administration.

Sales Management Training Tips: Sales are down. What can you do?

I faced a similar situation in Q1 2003. As VP of Sales of a Canadian pharmaceutical organization we faced the SARS crisis. Access to our customers became limited. Hospitals and physicians were also limiting sales rep visits. Marketing started calling the sales numbers down for the year, blaming the SARS crisis. As head of sales I had few options. What I did know was that I had to utilize my resources where they were going to generate the greatest revenue. What would you do?

How to become a “roving sales leader”
Management By Walking Around (MBWA) took the management world by storm in the 80’s. The author of this ground-breaking management theory was Tom Peters. He was immediately hailed as a “leadership genius” and touted as “one of the top management gurus to come along in over a century”. It really wasn’t that big of a deal. MBWA is really just common sense…

Experience is not a substitute for the pre-call plan
Every now and then it's a good idea to re-visit one of those "everybody knows that" concepts and do a hard-nosed self-assessment regarding our personal sales performance. Always, always pre-plan every sales call, right?

Cash for Clunkers: Stimulus or Boondoggle
Cash for Clunkers, the federal program that pays $4,500 toward the purchase of certain new cars, is tremendously popular. But as with all government handouts, for everyone who benefits, someone else pays a price. Only a reasoned examination of all of the costs together with the benefits can the balance between the two be evaluated. This article does just that.

How to Handle the “I don’t have the Time” Objection
Can you see how much more effective you will be by being prepared with and using these kinds of scripts? Believe me, it will separate you from the majority of your competition.

THE TRAINING GAP
If a new sales rep, or any new employee, with potential, talent and ability fails maybe it is the quality and nature of the trainer, coach and the program.

Sales Management Training Tips: Coaching the Talented-Slacker

Meet Jane. Jane is an experienced and successful district sales manager who could work in any industry and for any company. In fact, there are many Jane’s in all companies. Jane is performance driven, a very good coach and a people person. Each month Jane is put to the test with different sales reps she must coach to success. IBZ is a mid sized technology company. The company has had some tough years but has turned the corner. It pays it’s reps a combination of salary and bonus for achievement of targets. This year the bonus plans has a super bonus portion which accelerates when a rep is 5% over quota. Jane wants to get 2009 off to a great start. In one of our monthly coaching sessions Jane, was expressing her frustrations with one of her most tenured sales reps.

Sales Management Training Tips: How to Coach the Self Doubter

Meet Joe. Joe is a successful district sales manager who could work in any industry and for any company. In fact, there are many Joe’s in all companies. Each month Joe is put to the test with different sales reps he must coach to success. Joe has decided to start the year by building development plans with each of his reps. He is a strong believer that his role is to help them develop their skills and to ensure that the district achieve it’s sales numbers. With the economic downturn the marketplace is becoming increasingly more competitive. The company has had good growth over the last 5 years but there is an overall sense that the sales force is composed of many gatherers and there is a need for more hunters.

Three Things That Kill CRM (...and how to counter them)
According to the best research I can find, roughly 2/3 of CRM implementations fail. How can this be? After so many years why haven't sales leaders and CRM vendors figured this out?

You can't afford to let the knowledge leak out!
The sales rep with superior knowledge is a formidable competitor. That's why you have a Sales Excellence Council in place. (Right?) And that group is charged with identifying the best and newest sales best practices and tools. (Right?)

Discipline, Opportunity Management & Value Propositions
Time again to take a look in the mirror and pick a few items to get really good at executing over the next twelve months. (Seems like maybe I've seen a few of these before!)

Would a wiki work?
A recent study conducted by CSO Insights indicated that poor sales knowledge management is hitting the top and bottom lines of companies in extremely negative ways. These included high sales rep turn over, longer sell cycles and lower win rates.

There may never be a better time than now.
The cold, hard fact is that for most of us, this economy has jacked up the challenge of selling more faster BIG TIME. I'll give 5 to 1 odds there are two things you wish you had already gotten done.

3 Reason’s to Invest In Sales Management Training
If you want to thrive in difficult times here are 3 reasons why you should invest in sales management training. Your sales force is your company’s most expensive promotional resource. Yet too many sales organizations operate well below their potential. Your front line sales managers are the people who can unlock the potential in your sales organization

Sales Management Training and Focus
In a strong economy just showing up to play is enough to achieve your sales objectives. In today’s economic environment sales leaders are facing sales force downsizing and poor sales rep morale. Sales reps are frustrated by longer sales cycles, dropping demand, unrealistic quotas, concerns about declining income and losing their jobs.

H.U.G. Your Sales Reps
Do you hug your salespeople? Hugs are actually the little things you do for your sales team.

Stop Blaming Marketing
Sales and Marketing need to learn to work together and stop pointing fingers.

How Focus Helps Sales Management Effectiveness
In a strong economy just showing up to play is enough to achieve your sales objectives. In today’s economic environment sales leaders are facing sales force downsizing and poor sales rep morale. Sales reps are frustrated by longer sales cycles, dropping demand, unrealistic quotas, concerns about declining income and losing their jobs.

The 5 Biggest Sales Management Coaching Blunders
Transforming your sales managers from good to great coaches can have a dramatic impact on sales. In fact, sales coaching is the management No. 1 activity that drives sales performance. The only problem is that managers have not been taught how to effectively coach. Coaching is a skill that takes time to perfect and unless effectively coached or trained managers make all types of mistakes.

Lessons in Networking: The Ultimate No-No
Networking is a great way to get your business and your name known, find new potential strategic partners, and to surface some prospects. But networking isn't just about finding prospects. You know that, and I know that. Pretty much everyone in business knows that, right?

Sales Simplified - The First Step in Selling
Call Reluctance Strikes Everyone... men and women, young and old, new and experienced - reps in every selling field. It's as common as the common cold, but can be a lot more deadly - even killing sales careers.

New Manager LifeSavers
A spark from "Survivor" gives a key to success for new managers. The fun, the motivation and drive come from saying you'll do it, and doing it. When a manager fans those passionate sparks into flames great things happen. These are critical elements in increasing productivity, building trust and worthwhile relationships.

7 Things To Avoid When Building Customer Relationships
What do you focus on when you meet with new sales prospects? Do you concentrate on what's important or do you hurry-up and start selling? Here are seven things to avoid when building customer relationships.

What Is A Quality Sales Organization?
Are you interested in extracting the optimal results from your sales organization? Then focus on building an organization that has a healthy, high performance culture. A high quality organization will ultimately morph into a world class sales machine.

Marketing Has Left the Building
Since when did Marketing become a corporate headquarters role that never leaves the building? Even in tough economic times - we have phones and web conferencing and a video camera in every laptop and the network bandwidth to drive it. Come on - We have Skype!

Three is Marketing's Magic Number
When you overload your audience with too many messages, you risk not communicating at all.

Sales is Discounting Again
How many times have I heard this cry from clients? Always makes me wonder if corporate citizens understand and appreciate how hard selling can be - especially if you have little air cover and not much ammunition. The fact is that if sales is discounting it means the company, and particularly marketing, hasn't done its job. I'm not trying to pass blame - just pointing out a 'relative' truth.

Efficient Sales Travel Planning: Reduce Costs and Increase Sales
When the going gets tough, the tough look for new ways to get the job done. Today’s laptop mapping programs will help your sales team get the job done - reducing travel costs, while increasing your sales. Prior planning prevents poor performance, so stop doing it the way you've always done it. Shake things up, make your team more efficient and make this your best sales year ever.

THE THREE THINGS YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT YOUR SALES PIPELINE BUT CRM CANT TELL YOU

Why do only 1 in 5 companies state that they are seeing revenue increases after implementing a CRM application ? Why are they not seeing the sales productivity gains they expected? And why do they still get surprised at the end of the quarter? Why is it that they still don’t know what they don’t know when it comes to the health of their sales pipeline and forecast? The main reason is that though you may think you’ve implemented a full CRM solution, you’ve really only implemented half of a total solution.

Delegating

Free up your time to focus on higher level issues while developing your sales reps through delegation. Your s team will grow in capability and confidence, and you will spend less time supervising them and checking their work. You and your team will be more productive, accomplishing the important rather than the urgent tasks while feeling increased job satisfaction. Ultimately, you will build a team that runs itself and you will be the envy of every manager in your company.

How to Shorten your Sales Cycle
Does it seem like it takes forever to close new business deals? You’re running strong campaigns, generating plenty of leads, seeing a flurry of sales activity. But even though your sales reps are consistently following up, prospects just aren’t ready to buy. Your sales cycle used to be 4 weeks, but now it’s 6, 8 or even twelve. And the longer it gets, the harder it is to hit your goals.

Managing Sales Reps' Defensiveness
Defensiveness is a natural and normal response by sales reps to a sales manager's feedback and appraisal. It is important to understand that defensiveness is emotional, not rational. When responding to defensiveness, show empathy for your rep's underlying feelings rather than challenging their perceptions.

How to Get Ghostwritten Articles About Your Company Published in Trade Journals
There's no better PR than a client testimonial in a trade publication. Find out how to get these case studies published.

How to Execute Perfect Trade Shows
12 tips for trade show management and marketing

An anthropological view of marketing
Hunting, Farming or Fishing: What Are You Doing?

Selling in Bad Economic Times!

When the economy goes bad, it is easy for sales people to blame their lack of results on this, and I would not pretend that it is possible for every company to make their planned sales targets when this happens. However, after working with many sales organizations in 5 countries, and as a result of a survey of some 4,000 sales people, I found some very simple opportunities for improved sales effectiveness, which, if identified and seized, can produce some amazing increases in results even in tough times. Its just a matter of focus and discipline; things many sales people are averse to!

Sales Training for Entry Level Sales Representatives
Sales training for entry level sales representatives will refine the basic sales techniques of your entry level sales staff and advance their sales skills with the growing interest of the company. Sales training for sales reps can get your sales team on the same page and focused to obtain the strategic sales goals of the company.

Eating Your Own Dog Food
Many companies don't practice what they preach not knowing it would hit them hard in the long run. The customers are not really that dumb and have evolved.

Is Radio Advertising Right For You?
Is the radio the right medium for you to market your business? It all depends. Many businesses have blossomed from it and others have been burnt badly. While there are always exceptions to the rules (and I LOVE exceptions), here are some good guidelines when it comes to choosing RADIO as a place to promote your business.

The Wave Of The Future May Be Logo Imprinted Products
Does the effectiveness of an advertisement depend on where you see it: in the newspaper, online, or in your own hand? The wave of the future may be logo-imprinted products, which have proven to be a better value than either newsprint or online advertising.

Experts In Party Plan, Tracey Edwards & Party Plan Pat Talk About Home Party Businesses!
One of the biggest obstacles that many direct sales reps. and home party consultants seem to come across on a consistent basis is the constraints that home party plan and direct sales companies place on marketing, promotion and advertising. What challenges have you faced with regards to this and how did you over-come?

Jewelry Home Party Business Home Party Marketing Experts Secrets EXPOSED
Home Party Business is booming But what separates the struggling, frustrated, heartbroken, cash-poor Home Party Plan Business Owner and direct sales consultants from the confident, pink Cadillac driving, white Mercedes Benz owning, obviously clued-in home party plan marketers pulling in huge numbers and results home party jewelry sales (EVEN in this chaotic, soul-sucking economy)?

Direct Sales & Home Party Marketing: Home Party Plan Success Secrets REVEALED!!!!!
As a direct sales consultant for a home party plan or direct sales company, it is rather important that you learn how to market your business, find recruits and hostesses, because Home Party Business is booming, just ask Warren Buffet, the richest man in the world and oh by the way he own three home party companies e.g., Pampered Chef!

Measuring Results: Key performance indicators can help set better goals for sales reps
Sales managers often rush to judgment if sales reps aren't meeting their quotas, and automatically assume that they either don't have the skills or the understanding to perform.

Gearing Up for Managed Services
Managed services can be a great revenue source for solution providers. VARs that specialize in managed services will generate 20 percent annual revenue growth compared to 5 percent to 10 percent growth for traditional product resellers, according to MAI-Partners, Inc.

Sales Manager Excuse: Dreading a Sales Meeting

Sales Manager Excuse: Dreading a Sales Meeting "I get the sense my salespeople dread coming to my weekly sales meeting." For most sales managers, the weekly sales meeting is the one chance you have to shine in front of your team, but if you don't, the meeting becomes a huge de-motivator. Sales reps must do the grunt work necessary to get in front of a real live prospect, and only have a brief window to shine and get an order. Sales meetings work in much the same way for you, as the sales manager. Through Sandler sales management training you can learn a radical new way to run sales meetings that taps into each person's internal motivation and charges them up to sell more, much the same way an NFL coach charges up his players at halftime to dig deep and win the game in the 2nd half.

MLB and Recording Your Calls
The bottom line is that if you want to get better then you have to record yourself and you have to study, learn and use better techniques. It’s what all other professionals are doing…

How to Beat Your Competition
Once again, these questions (and all the other ones I know you're thinking of right now) will reveal what your prospect's true buying motives are, and until you know them you've just shooting blind. Kind of like 80% of your competition does. Once you understand what it's going to take to sell them, you need to build the value of doing business with you and your company.

Finding alternate lead sources within your company
Many sales reps often overlook valuable lead sources within their own company, and spend precious selling time looking for leads outside their office doors. They attend networking events, travel to conferences and trade shows, partner with other sales reps, and research potential external lead sources, but rarely consider all the invaluable sources of information around them.

Six Keys to Success's Door
That's a pretty accurate description of how most sales reps enter the marketplace. They understand their title and their assignment, but nobody ever tells them how to fulfill their responsibilities. What is needed are tangible sales tips and techniques that can help them unlock the door to success.

Start Blowing Your Own Horn!
Training organizations aren't always valued as highly as they should be. Self promote. Blow your own horn.

Immediately Scrap Your Elevator Pitch
I don't know who invented the 30 second elevator pitch, but you may want to research who is the expert that gave you that advice before you use it. I say scrap it, and start asking questions instead.

Keep Your Pipeline Full!
It’s not uncommon to lose focus on your pipeline – or funnel – and consistently filling it with new opportunities. Reps often spend too much time on a few opportunities that are on the verge of closing at the bottom of the funnel, and don’t seek out new leads to fill the funnel.

Karma Keys to a Referral-Based Business
Want to build a repeatable and successful process of increasing sales to both existing customers and new prospects? Then build a referral-based business where giving referrals is just as valuable as getting referrals.

Topgrading For Sales — Sales Recruitment and Sales Coaching
An invaluable sales coaching and recruitment resource for next to nothing. Get the book after reading the review.

Personal Selling - It's Time For A Tune-up
Personal selling success depends on an equal balance of selling skills and sales planning. Discover the six critical questions to ask if you want to go to the next level of success.

Debunking the Great Sales Myth

The progress of sales as a profession is often hampered by myths, misunderstanding and plain ignorance. Over many years of testing, recruiting, researching and training salespeople, we have learned quite a few things about salespeople. Some may surprise you and some may not. The 39% factor Interviews with over 100 000 business decision-makers have revealed that in b-2-b markets a customer’s decision to buy is based on:- • Salesperson’s competence (39%) • A total customer solution (22%) • Quality of product or service (21%) • Competitive price (18%) The salesperson is the sale. • Many sales stars operate in commodity marks • Sales superstars usually dont shine academically • Sales talent can be sharpened not created • Sales training is not enough

Hiring Good Salespeople

Customers and markets have changed, competition has intensified and products rapidly become commoditised. Consequently salespeople who are no more effective than a product catalogue will be replaced by a new breed of professionals who have a new focus: Demand creation, philosophical alignement, in-depth understanding of their customers' businesses, positioning, executive credibility and the delivery of value. Consequently sales forces and their HR departments will have to use "best of breed" tools and processes for consistently recruiting genuine sales talent.

Basic Alignment Drives Sales Results
As important as product, technology, market message, and strategy all are, there is nothing more essential to the overall organization’s sales success than the internal alignment between the sales leadership team and the corporate strategy. The point transcends Sales and applies to every function within the firm, but SalesFulcrum's founder discusses it specifically to Sales.

Sales Productivity is All About Outcomes (so why focus on inputs?)

Selling business-to-business is all about outcomes (sell enough, and your commission will increase). Yet many companies looking to improve their results focus, today, on improving their inputs. B2B sales productivity requires a focus from beginning to end on outcomes. Sales efforts aren't productive if they don't yield sales and get prospects to progress towards sales. Proof of sales is dead easy. Proof of the latter is much harder. It's commonly based on what Rep have done and their impressions of their prospects' interests. Give Reps better, more precise, data on their prospects' interests, and help Reps (using this data) invest their efforts wisely, and their productivity will improve. Sales cycles will shrink. We've proven it.

Recruiting Sales Talent Major HR Challenge

Worldwide companies are dreadfully inept at consistently hiring the right kind of sales talent for the right jobs. There's a higher level of failure and personnel churn in sales than in any other business function. Research indicates that hiring accuracy runs anywhere between 35% and 55%, depending on the sales role. Jobs such as outbound telesales and commission only life assurance sales are particularly problematic. Using the best possible tools greater than 90% hiring accuracy is quite achievable.

Conflict Of Closure
This Brief article discusses the issue of fear in closing the sale.

10 Tips to More Effective Direct Mail
Direct mail is not sexy or high-tech, but it is a very effective marketing tool for both business-to-business and business-to-consumer marketing. Here are 10 very practical tips that will make it even more cost-effective and more lead-generation-effective!

Managing Sales Motivation - Find the Motivational Drains
Most sales people need motivation. Motivation comes in many different forms. One way to motivate your team is to identify areas that are draining their motivation. This article will help you find the drain and plug it to regain motivation.

Trigger Events and Sales 2.0
Web 2.0 enables Sales 2.0 and many sales people can take customer communications into their own hands and to an entirely new level. Sales reps have more control over the tools that they use, and they can be always on, answering to customers questions in the matter of minutes and not hours or days.

Selling in 21st Century
There has been a revolution in everything in our society except in sales. The sales industry has crawled while other professions have been running: "new" sales books are still talking about the same tips, tricks and techniques that were working in last century and bringing the success to sales people.

Sales Managers Save Gas Reduce Cost of Travel With Computerized Mapping and GPS
In today’s economy, it’s more important than ever before to plan efficient sales travel that helps maximize selling time on the ground, while reducing travel expenses. Laptop mapping and GPS has become an important tool helping companies to increase sales, while reducing the cost of sales.

Fit into Sales Success
If you’re in sales and want to say “I love my job,” here’s what it takes to “fit” into the sales culture.

How To Hold Sales People More Accountable
In working with a client of mine, keeping sales people and distributors accountable is a top priority.

Business Coach learnings about Unprofitable Sales
As Brian Tracy says, the root of all business problems is “low sales”- and the solution is “high sales”. Very true! Now read on to what his certified FocalPoint Business Coaches have to say about fixing that problem in your company.

The Power of Your Own Affiliate Program
Increasing sales of your products and services can come through a number of marketing tactics. One of the best ways to ramp up sales quickly is to develop your own affiliate program. Learn how to create an affiliate program quickly and easily with some helpful advice.

How to Take Good Notes
When a conversation is moving fast over the phone it becomes critical that you are able to take good notes. This means the name, title (get it exact), extension, email, fax, assistant, backups, peers and subordinates for anyone that has an influence on your sales cycle.

Five Steps to Cold Calling Success
Are you having a hard time reaching decision-makers, setting up well-qualified appointments, getting past gatekeepers, gathering information or finding if you are calling on an appropriate prospect in the first place? Maybe it seems impossible to get your cold calls returned or you are getting stuck into an endless loop of voice mail. Read on...

A Handful of Tips to Improve Sales Probability
At the beginning of every sales process, there is some form of needs assessment performed by the buyer and seller. When sales reps are tasked with “opportunity creation,” uncovering a pain which forces the customer to take immediate action is the key to sustained success. Let’s look at some ways you can utilize pain to further the sales process.

Human Resources — A Key To Competitive Advangtage
This article provides some keys to developing a work force which provides competitive advantage in the marketplace. These keys deal with recruiting, employee orientation, employee testing, compensation, team building, and motivation.

Street Level Marketing Can Boost Sales
Most field sales professionals don’t lack for sales skills as much as they do for marketing skills. This article shares some micro-marketing ideas to help sales reps get in front of more prospects.

3 Rules for Successful Up Sells
If your product or service allows you the chance to up sell your customer at the point of sale (and seriously, what product or service doesn’t??), then you instantly double and even triple your income if you know how to properly suggest and get your prospects and customers to buy more.

Selling Is About Helping People

When you were a young child do you remember people asking you what you wanted to be when you grew up? Do you remember what you said? If you have your own children and ask them this same question, what will they say? The typical answer from an average kid is something like doctor, lawyer, teacher, policeman, fireman, and the like. What do these professions have in common? They all help people. A child might even say an athlete, who helps people by entertaining them. Or even an astronaut, who helps people by furthering the progress of mankind as a whole. Although in the latest news, I’m not sure that animal-abusing athletes and drunken astronauts are good role models these days, but I digress.

Proven Steps to Eliminate Cold Calling
Cold calling is frequently the bane of a sales rep's existence, and very few actually enjoy the task. If you fall into this category, this article may be just what the doctor ordered as we take a look at various ways to eliminate cold calling from the day-to-day routine.

Seven Early Warning Signals of Ineffective Sales
No one is perfect, and no business is either. So it stands to reason that individual components of a business may not be perfect either. Specifically, this could mean your sales department and sales processes could use some tuning as well. Consider these seven early warning signals and see if you can make some improvements in some areas of your business.

Forget the Eagle Peacock Owl or Dove are you a Canary
As a professional sales person you can and should do what's necessary to avoid becoming redundant.

How To Build A TurboCharged Sales Force
This article describes the proven steps that are required to build a salesforce that consistently "hits the numbers" and takes the company to a leadership position in its industry.

How to Hire Successful Sales Reps
Many business owners and sales managers ask me if I have a proven system or a way to identify and hire top sales reps. They have tried everything, they tell me. Well, here's what they are missing, and what you need to do to find and hire Good Sales Reps!

Should You Train Unmotivated Sales Reps?
I have been consulting with a lot of sales managers and business owners who need and want sales training, but they are concerned that the training might be wasted on some of their sales reps (sometimes as much as one-third of their team) because this portion of the reps are either resistant, or simply unmotivated. What should you do? This article will tell you!

Business Acumen – Helping Pharma Companies Compete to Win
Business Acumen has been identified by sales leaders as the critical sales skill in order to compete and win in the new era of leaner and meaner sales forces. With fewer sales reps and resources companies have become more reliant on the existing sales reps to deliver sales.

sales reps Tagged Articles

Other sales reps Related Articles